


"Normal" is relative, anyway.

by 21hax



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, M/M, Multi, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-01-17 07:12:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1378543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/21hax/pseuds/21hax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Mary and John want to do is turn their lives around and get over the trauma of their pasts. Luckily, they're both able to help each other brilliantly in that aspect.</p><p>Of course, once they finally build a normal life together for themselves and settle in, Sherlock Holmes comes crashing right through it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a new beginning times two

**Author's Note:**

> This story will focus mainly on the formation of John and Mary's relationship, how Sherlock's return affects that relationship, and Mary's side of the story and how canon events impact her, especially (eventually) from "His Last Vow".

For all her time in this world, Mary has no idea what she could possibly have done to deserve John Watson.

When she first met him, it was already about a year since the highly publicized suicide of a certain up-and-coming detective. And John still looked completely and utterly ruined.

She'd already had a vague idea of who John was before she met him. Nearly anyone who knows about Sherlock Holmes would recognize the name Dr John Watson, and like many, Mary's knowledge was based just on scraps of information here and there from the news, mostly referring to John as something of a sidekick. After coming to work at the same clinic as him, her curiosity grew exponentially every day, and she found herself Googling him and reading news articles and his blog entries and generally researching the pair of them more extensively.

The kind of stuff they report in the media is usually total bollocks so she mostly ignored any references to their dramatized "bromance", but they definitely seemed to have had a close knit relationship, judging by the way John wrote about Sherlock, and even their little exchanges in the comments section of his blog. Her newfound knowledge of the detective definitely had her interest piqued, but she knew it was far from her right to ever ask John anything about him, so she just tucks that curiosity away inside of her, possibly for a rainy day, possibly never to be seen again.

She met John when she took over the job of a nurse who had quit at the clinic where he worked. It was often fast-paced, especially as she learned the intricacies to how this place was run specifically, and it usually left her with little to no time to communicate with John on anything other than a purely professional level. Despite the brevity of their interactions, there was definitely something of an immediate attraction, something about him that drew Mary in like a moth to a flame, something quiet and dignified that simply intrigued her and made her crave more. Though it was also clear to Mary how John was running himself ragged, consuming himself with his work to try and keep himself busy so as not to trip and stumble and fall into a deep, dark place from which there might be no return.

You can tell that kind of thing in a person, when you've been there yourself.

Sometimes Mary experiences the bliss of forgetting her past self for a bit. She busies herself with her new life, her new job, her new hobbies and hangouts and friends and for just a few moments, she really is Mary Morstan. But the littlest thing can make it all come crashing back down on her—like, a stranger passes you on the street, and oh, they look just like that one you spent months tracking down halfway across Canada before finally getting to send a bullet through the back of their head, and—

And Mary feels like a tidal wave is trying to crash down on her, and sometimes she almost wants to give up and let it. Let all the darkness inside her well up and rise to the surface and just utterly consume her.

The thing that always brings her back from these sorts of feelings is the thought of the "real Mary Morstan", the one whose name she appropriated. What kind of life would that Mary have led, had she been granted the beautiful gift of a lengthy life, one she might have filled with all sorts of warmth and goodness and energy and love? It helps Mary, this Mary, the Mary ushering a new patient into the right room to see Dr Watson, it helps her remember that she is alive, and her life is precious, and she has made a conscious decision, a determined choice to carry out her life as Mary Morstan in a way she can be proud of, in a way that won't be tainted by her past, because she won't let it be, lest she give in and let herself be destroyed for good.

She goes about her routine, taking the new patient's vitals then going back to the front desk to take care of some paperwork. It's a normal work day through and through, but by the end of it she finds she's finally caught John right as the two of them are getting off work for the day. She finishes up collecting her things, tossing them into her bag, and then quickens her stride to catch up to John in the hall.

"Dr Watson!" She says with a smile, "Done for the day, are you?"

"Oh, um, yeah," he agrees, sounding like he's been drawn from deep thought. "Please, call me John."

"All right, John," she beams. "Where're you off to now, then? Any plans?"

She wants to say this so it's easy for John to make up some fake plans, just in case her instincts are off and he's not interested (though, honestly, she doubts it).

"Oh, ah, no, no plans," John says as a smile creeps onto his face, and Mary's heart positively _flutters_ , because it's the most genuine smile she's seen on him to date.

"No plans, huh? How is it a handsome doctor like you doesn't have any plans the night before his day off?"

"Well, I could similarly ask how a gorgeous nurse like you doesn't have any plans either, but I think instead I'll just ask, do you like Thai food?"

"Love it."

"Brilliant."


	2. a product of our past experiences

It's a little over two months into their relationship when he first brings up Sherlock. Because it's important and _right_ to wait for John to bring him up in his own time.

He asks her suddenly one sleepy night when they're just hanging out at her place, wrapped up in blankets and each other on the sofa, Mary with a novel and John with his laptop.

"You've heard about the detective Sherlock Holmes, haven't you?" His voice rumbles quietly.

"I have," Mary replies neutrally, sitting herself up straighter from where she was leaning into John, so she can look at him. Her nerves start to prickle as she thinks, this is it — this is The Talk, the one about how John is still getting over his best friend's suicide, the one she's been waiting for in its inevitability.

"What do you know about him?"

"I know that you two were..." Partners? Sounds too intimate, it'll spook him. Colleagues? Too clinical. Best friends, too presumptuous. "...working together. You two solved crimes."

"It's true," he agrees, and he sighs, looking like he's trying to figure out what to say.

"I know that he...how he..." Mary trails off, not wanting to say anything insensitive about his death.

John nods. "Yeah."

He pauses for a long moment, before finally saying in a low voice, "His birthday's tomorrow. I want to...last year, I visited his grave."

Mary takes his hand in hers and squeezes it. He shifts so he can thread their fingers together and then gives her hand a squeeze as well.

"Will you come with me?" His voice is so much meeker than she's used to.

"Of course I will, darling."

He gives a bit of a tight smile before dropping the subject for the rest of the night.

The next day John wakes up first and waits for Mary to awaken in her own time a little bit later, before they go about their morning business mostly in a comfortable silence, and by time they've gotten dressed, Mary glances at John and sees his face has gone rather steely and distant, and she takes his hand in hers and leads him to the front door, where they grab their coats and head out.

It's still silent on the cab ride to the cemetery, and silent as John leads Mary to the grave, their hands still linked. Mary wonders about all the things John could be thinking right now, the whirlwind of emotion raging behind those dark eyes of his.

There's a few bunches of lovely flowers laid about the tombstone, but John didn't bring anything, even though it's Sherlock's birthday. Mary's not going to ask who could've put down the ones there, nor why John is empty-handed, but if she's gathered any idea of the kind of man Sherlock Holmes is, she'd be willing to bet he wouldn't give a toss about some flowers purchased in his name. The flowers and gifts at a cemetery are more for the people giving them than anyone else.

After a long silence, John's quiet voice crackles up, sounding like it's breaking through a lump in his throat. "I was there when he died," he whispers, then he clears his throat and sniffs, and his voice gains some strength. "Did you know that? You can read all about how he died in the papers, and how poor Dr Watson was left behind like some clueless widow, but does anyone know that I actually witnessed the moments before the life left my best friend?"

Mary's eyes begin to swirl with tears, and she keeps her gaze on the tombstone but out the corner of her eye she can see John drag the back of his hand across his eyes, and she squeezes his hand in hers. "I didn't know," she whispers, and when she blinks, it forces the tears down her face in two thin, straight streaks, that flood right up with a fresh wave of tears.

"When I got to Bart's, he called me on the phone from the rooftop and told me to look at him. So I looked, and I saw him standing up there, an he looked so...so small," the last word comes out in a gush of air, and then he draws a deep, shaky breath back in.

"He's always been so tall and gangly, the great big oaf, he usually towers over me, and he was all those floors up in the sky but I'd still never seen him look so..." He stops himself and clears his throat again, pulling a sigh in through his teeth before letting it out with a quiet, rumbly groan. Then he's silent for a long time, and the two of them stand together, lost in thought about the complete madman laid to rest before them.

"It's been over a year, now," he finally says, his voice much steadier. "I'm...I'm a lot better these days. It's not so hard anymore. Today is his birthday so I ended up thinking about it a lot lately, but..."

He shakes out his shoulders and stands up a little straighter, before quirking his head up and to the side to look at Mary with the tiniest of smiles. "I'm really glad you're here with me, Mary."

"I wouldn't want to be anywhere else than by your side," she says and she can hardly believe she can say something like that and really, truly mean it.

John's eyes widen marginally and he lets out a little laugh of surprise. "I...yeah. Me too. With you."

They face each other and Mary smiles and pecks him on the lips before winding her arms around his waist and leaning into him, burying her face in his shoulder. He wraps his arms around her and they just stand there and hold each other for a long time.


	3. old memories make way for new ones

After that day at the grave, it's like a bit of a dam broke. Suddenly, John makes little comments about what Sherlock would say about something, or how something reminds him of Sherlock. Usually, the comments are all rather light-hearted, but once in a blue moon he gets a little choked up at something, and Mary watches the emotion well up on his face behind the surface, and she does her best to either ride it out with him as he relives old memories, or she'll smooth it all away and take his mind off a man she never knew.

It's not long before they decide to move in together. John's flat is really a shell of a place, and he spends so much time at Mary's place anyway. Others might think its a little fast to move in together so soon, but Mary simply experiences with John a feeling of comfort she doesn't know if she's ever felt before, and she settles into life with John so simply and effortlessly, that it's really no use resisting it.

One morning, some weeks after John's unpacked and it starts really feeling like _their_ place, she asks if he'd like to go out together after work.

"Oh, about that...I got a call from an old friend, we're gonna meet up for a pint tonight," John explains over breakfast.

"Oh, is that right?" Mary says brightly. "Who is it?"

"Greg Lestrade, that detective Sherlock and I worked with on a lot of police cases."

"Sounds lovely," Mary smiles. "Well, you boys have fun."

They get through a somewhat hectic work day and then Mary sends John off with a kiss and she returns home. She falls asleep before he gets back.

The next day is their day off, and Mary wakes up a little later than usual, John sleeping soundly next to her. She rolls over to face him, and puts an arm on the pillow above his head, so that his head is sort of cradled under her arm. She takes her other hand to slowly brush her fingers through his hair a few times. He doesn't wake up, so Mary just lays there, holding him, before she ends up slowly falling back into a light sleep.

She wakes up again later to the feeling of a warm hand on the dip of her waist, thumb stroking softly. She draws a deep breath and opens her eyes slowly to see them in the same position as before, except John is awake and nuzzling closer to her. When he notices she's awake, he tightens his grip on her waist and buries his face in her chest.

"Morning, lovely," he mumbles into her.

"Morning," she sing-songs, and starts stroking his hair again. "How'd you sleep?"

"Mmm," he hums noncommittally before starting to move his face against her chest, sliding his hand on her waist up her body, slipping underneath her camisole and coming to rest so that his thumb and index finger hug the edge of her breast.

"Hey," she protests playfully, and John nips at her chest gently through the camisole until she lets out a squeal that turns into a giggle. "Oi, stop it, you!"

He pulls back and grins cheekily up at her. They eventually roll out of bed and mosey on into the kitchen to make breakfast together. After they've sat down at the table to eat, Mary asks, "So how was last night?"

"Mm," John hums in recognition like he's just remembered it. He finishes the bite of food in his mouth and takes a sip of his tea before answering. "It was nice, yeah. It was actually mostly unrelated to Sherlock, which was really nice. Greg's a really great guy. I think this was literally the first time we've ever hung out just to...hang out. Even the last time we saw each other, it was so he could give me some of Sherlock's old stuff. Well, we've always been linked by Sherlock, we'd never really taken the time to just..."

Mary nods in understanding. "Well, I'm glad. Sounds like it was good for you."

"It was," John says. They chat about other things as they finish up eating before moving over to the sofa.

"Last night wasn't _totally_ devoid of talk of Sherlock, of course," John says as he sits down, Mary sidling up next to him. "There's this bloke, Anderson, he worked for Greg on a lot of cases, and nowadays he comes up with all these insane theories about how Sherlock's still alive." He laughs through a tight smile, that he drops pretty quickly. "Greg told me about the newest one last night. This guy's gone totally mental, he really pours himself into this stuff, all to try to come up with ways Sherlock―how he could be..."

Mary puts her hand on his. "There's a part of you that really wishes one of them's true, isn't there?"

"Of c―" his voice catches and he clears his throat. "Of _course_ there is. God, Mary, sometimes I feel like I can't even breathe."

She squeezes his hand. A question has floated around in the back of her mind for a long time now, and she feels like she should bring it up.

"Honey, there's something I've been wondering about for a while, about you and Sherlock," she starts off, and pauses to try to gather up the next few words she wants to say. John looks at her, seeming open to whatever she might ask. "Were the two of you...were you ever, ah, _more_ than friends?"

"Why does everyone always think that?!" John explodes, his voice is loud, but still a touch under shouting. He swings his arms out in front of him in frustration. "Every bloody person we met assumed that of us! Angelo at the restaurant, people from cases, even Irene Adler was convinced I was in love with him. Mrs Hudson thought it, too ― or no, she _still does_ think it! God, even Greg took me aside one day and tried to ask me as gingerly as he could, if in my relationship with Sherlock, did I feel like he ever hurt me or made me do things I didn't want to do?" He scoffs. "He thought Sherlock was my abusive boyfriend!"

A joking grimace tugs at Mary's lips before she playfully says, "Doesn't sound like a great vibe to be giving off."

"It's not funny!" John roars. "It's not a goddamn joke! It's―"

He cuts himself off and takes a deep breath as he covers his face with his hands. Mary purses her lips in humility, wanting to say sorry but knowing to just stay quiet for now and let John sort himself out for a second.

"It's stupid," he finally mutters behind his hands. "It's so fucking stupid. I _know_ why they all think it. I know we looked...we were..."

He uncovers his face and sighs, looking at Mary with eyes so full of emotion it made her own eyes turn glassy.

"We had a special relationship. We were really close, in ways a lot of people don't... _do_. With their best mates. It was...dark, sometimes. We've gone through dark things, before we met each other, and after, together. It's different than other people. It changes you, and creates a whole new facet inside you, that people don't _get_ , unless they've got it too. That...facet."

And Mary understands that all too well. It's that same darkness in John, paired with the darkness that he doesn't know she carries within her as well, that first drew her to him in the same way, that perfect blend of two souls, utterly lost in this world and yet somehow miraculously found when meshed together. Even if he doesn't know about her past, she hopes he feels that same strength woven into their own unique bond.

His eyes wandered slowly around the room as he talked, but now they settle back on Mary's. "So people didn't _get_ us, and they all felt this great need to categorize us in some nice little label that they _did_ understand, so they just assumed it was more than friendship. But Mary, it never was, I need you to believe me, to believe that truth. It never, ever was."

"I believe you, love." And she does. "Do you know I believe you?"

"I do."

"And do you know it would have been fine, if it _had_ been more?"

John heaves another sigh. "It wouldn't've been, though."

"Sweetie, I don't care if you were―"

"No, I don't mean 'fine', like that. I know it's fine like that. Telling everyone over and over that I'm not gay was the easiest way to get them off it, but...not easy in terms of believability, really. Just easy in terms of me explaining it away."

Mary quirks her head to the side, eyebrows slightly furrowed, silently encouraging him to go on.

"I mean...well, I mean I'm _not_ gay, obviously," he gestures between them. "But if I just say it's because I'm not gay, which usually leads people to assume I'm saying I'm straight, and they might not believe me, but they basically drop it. And I don't have to get into the whole bit about...Sherlock. Being so...Sherlock."

"Did you..." Mary starts her sentence gently, trying to work it out. "Did you have feelings for him? And he wasn't interested?"

"No, it's not that, it's just... _Jesus_ , I don't know what it was," John moans out the end of the sentence in angst, then quietly and flatly says, "It would have ruined us."

"Ruined?" Mary repeats in utter confusion.

"Honestly, I don't know if I had feelings for him or if he had them for me or any of that, but I think it _would_ have been possible for our relationship to...get deeper or go further or something. Not really a relationship in the traditional sense or anything like that, just _more_ , in some aspects. But...I mean, Sherlock, he's...he's not a normal person, you know that. If I'd've asked, he would have said yes. I'm fairly certain of that. But if we'd've gotten together, he'd either play with me like a shiny new toy and toss me in the bin when he was done, or he'd get so obsessed it would consume us and I wouldn't be able to handle it and I'd have to get out of it. I didn't want... _that_. I didn't want to mess things up between us, of course, and I didn't want to just be some experiment or something. Basically everything I could think of that stemmed from a relationship with Sherlock was somewhere I didn't want to go."

"Oh, sweetheart," Mary sighs quietly, brimming with compassion for this brave, strong and utterly mad man she loves so much. She takes his hand that was resting on his knee and intertwines their fingers, drawing his arm closer to her body and resting her other hand on top of his arm, rubbing it affectionately.

"I hate to ask," she starts hesitantly, "but about what Greg said...well, Sherlock―he never _did_ force you into anything, right?"

"God, never," he says with a chuckle. "It's impossible to be forced to do something you don't want to by Sherlock Holmes. He just makes you realize how badly you wanted it, even if you'd had no idea, even if it made absolutely no sense he makes you realize it, he draws those things out of you and once you realize, you suddenly can't resist it any longer."

Mary smiles fondly and rubs his arm again. "I'm sure people have been forced to do things by Sherlock Holmes."

"I dunno, 'forced'? I don't think Sherlock has ever taken anything he's wanted by force. He's wanted some fucked up things, to be sure, and people make a lot of fuss when it comes to fucked up things, but...maybe he's forced some people. But never me. I could never say no to Sherlock, and I think it says a lot more about me than it does about Sherlock."

Mary doesn't say anything, because she doesn't need to say anything. She doesn't need to help John qualify anything, she doesn't need to poke and prod and pry at every last detail, or judge and dwell on things neither of them can change. She especially doesn't need to sit there and tell him everything's going to be okay, because sometimes, it's going to be decidedly _not_ okay. So Mary saves her words and extracts her hand that was holding John's and brings it up to his head to stroke her fingers through his hair, raking her fingernails lightly against his scalp, looking at him with all the love that is welling up in her heart and positively overflowing.

"Oh, Mary," he sighs with anguish, closing his eyes and reveling in her touch, covering her hand still on his arm with his. "Thank you...for asking about this. It's weighed on my mind all this time, and I didn't realize how heavily until now."

Mary looks at him and he opens his eyes and sees her smile full of warmth and love as she strokes his cheek with her thumb. He returns the smile, and brings his hand up to rest on her neck and gently draw her in for a kiss. They kiss lazily for a while, and Mary feels some of the tension melt off of him. She eventually gives him one last peck before drawing back and resting her head against his shoulder.

He slips his arm around her shoulders, and they stay quiet for a long time.

"It's really ridiculous if you think about it," John eventually says in an amused voice. "How could anybody ― how could _any_ body who really knew Sherlock, how ― or _me_ , for that matter, how could they honestly think we could be a couple? What'd they think we do, after we solve a case we go back home for a cuddle on the sofa and some telly? Go upstairs for shag, and, and, and what, the next morning I'll wake up to Sherlock making us breakfast? I mean, seriously, have they honestly thought it through?"

Mary tries and fails to hold back a giggle as she wraps her arms around his waist and looks up at him. "I dunno, but it sure seems like _you_ have."

"Ohhh, shut it, you," John growls playfully before drawing her up for another kiss, cradling her face. Their kisses slowly turn from languid to more heated, and Mary eventually shifts so that she's in his lap, her legs straddling him. Sitting on his legs gives her a little boost in height, so she's now looking slightly down at him when she smiles and rests her wrists on his shoulders. His mouth goes to her neck as he grabs her hips just under the hem of her shirt. She sighs happily as he kisses and nips at her collar bone, his hands slowly traveling ever upward under her shirt. After a while he stops and just keeps his face in the crook of her neck before talking, his words breathing against her skin.

"I _have_ thought about it before, you know. Sex with Sherlock. I mean, the way anybody just sort of idly thinks about sex with people they know. Hell, I've even thought about sex with Mrs Hudson before, when she'd go off talking about her 'physical' relationship with her old husband, I'd think, god, what must _that_ 've been like? Though it wasn't _me_ having sex with her in my thoughts, I mean―"

Mary's grin throughout his little rant bubbles over into another round of giggles and then outright laughter. "Don't worry, John, you don't need to explain. I'm not worried you're going to leave me and go running into the arms of Mrs Hudson," she says before leaning down for another kiss.

"Hey, don't be so sure of yourself," John draws back just far enough to talk, their noses still touching. "You never know. She took very good care of me, you could learn a thing or two."

"Oh, as if John Watson could ever be with someone who didn't know he can ruddy well take care of himself," she says against his lips, hers in a crooked grin, before closing the tiny space between them. She moves against him, pushing her hips more closely against his, wrapping her arms more tightly around his neck.

Again she pulls back to talk and says, "So you don't have sex with Mrs H in your fantasies―good to know. But with Sherlock...?"

He stole a few more quick kisses before replying, his hands stilling on her back. "It's weird, it's like a vague and abstract sort of idea of us. It's not like I sat there wishing I could shag my best mate. Mostly I just thought about what sex with such an insane person must be like. Had he ever even _had_ sex before? Maybe I'd've been his first. Maybe I'd've had to teach him everything, or been the first to show him that kind of pleasure."

"Hmm, may _be_ ," Mary sing-songs, before ducking her head to kiss at his neck, her arms moving down from his shoulders to his waist so she can slide her hands up the front of his undershirt. She almost considers taking it off, but decides it isn't worth the trouble of trying to untangle themselves enough first, so instead she goes straight for the waistband of his pyjama bottoms. She scoots her hips back a little to give her more room to wiggle her fingers under his waistband and tug at it teasingly, as she leans back down for another sloppy kiss. "What else've you thought about?" she whispers against his lips.

"I've thought about his body," he says, the words coming with much less restraint. "What his dick must look like. Probably huge and gorgeous like the rest of him. I've seen it before, I mean we lived together and that man has absolutely no sense of shame, but I've never seen him hard."

John's hands resume their persistent trek up her back, taking her shirt with them, and it becomes clear he thinks undressing is indeed worth the trouble. Mary reluctantly withdraws from him so they can pull her shirt off over her head. John tosses it to the side and before resting his hands on her ribs and sitting back to look her up and down for a moment. He frames the outline of her breasts with his fingers and pushes them up and together, and Mary watches in amusement as he tugs at them and kneads them. Then leaning forward, he nips at the soft flesh, tugging at it gently with his teeth, then finally taking a nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it a few times and then sucking on it. Mary closes her eyes, tilting her head back a little.

"And I've wondered," he says, releasing the suction with a tiny pop, "Did he even masturbate? I don't know if he had any sex drive at all, he seemed completely disinterested. But surely the man must've had a wank every once in a while. You'd explode if you didn't, wouldn't you? I bet it was usually real perfunctory, but every once in a while he'd sort of indulge. Probably when he was _really_ bored, when he had nothing going on and I was at the clinic, he'd get cozy and have a nice, long wank."

She sucks in a shaky breath and feels herself starting to grow impatient for things to move faster. There's something about listening to her boyfriend talk about his sexual fantasies about his old friend while touching her that's incredibly arousing. It's surely due to a good number of factors, like getting to see some of the more intimate details to John's deep emotional bond with Sherlock, and the fact that Mary even finds herself attracted to the idea of Sherlock, the intellectual machine who had a heart of gold underneath it all.

Through their nightclothes, Mary can feel John's erection, which she starts to palm through the thin cloth. She looks between their legs and for a moment she thinks she might be able to attempt this without having to take her bottoms off all the way, but quickly discards the idea and resigns herself to the task, swinging herself off John like dismounting a motorbike. She shoves down her bottoms and knickers without much preamble and John soon follows suit.

She resumes her position, giving John a heated smile. She takes his cock poking up proudly between them and gives it a few leisurely strokes before holding onto it as she positions herself above him. She braces her free hand on his shoulder and leans forward as she presses him against her hole and the liberal wetness there, just enough to slick the head of John's cock.

She's so glad they don't use condoms anymore, ever since they both got tested and came back fine. She's been on the pill for years, so that's not an issue either. It's so much more intimate to not have to worry about that latex layer between them. The two of them get to feel every little nerve ending as she takes him and rubs the tip back and forth along the entire length of her slit, spreading her slickness along it. She glances up at John and sees him with his eyes closed and eyebrows slightly furrowed, head tilting back a little. She can tell he's completely fine with her taking control of the whole thing.

"What else?" she asks, continuing to rub him against her.

"Well..." John clears his throat and keeps his eyes closed. "I've always thought, he's so observant, y'know? He knows everything. Maybe he's fantastic at figuring out what you want sexually, too."

Mary hums in interest.

"I mean, normal people, you know, we do our best figuring out what our partners want, we communicate and test stuff out and go slow and all that. But he's so good at 'observing' stuff, I wouldn't be surprised if he could tell your favorite sex position by the way you take your coffee or your biggest fetish by the way you tie your shoes. God, he could've been an absolute beast in bed if he really wanted."

She circles his tip against her clit, then back and forth, another few circles, then before long she can barely take it anymore and directs him back to her hole. She lets go of him and bears down, taking him in rather easily with how wet she's gotten. John groans through a sigh and rests his warm hands on the outside of either of her thighs. He leans back fully into the sofa and Mary follows, pressing her chest against his as she slowly rides him, pulling off almost entirely before sinking back down, until he's pressing wonderfully deep inside her, again, and again. He's the absolute perfect length for her, just enough to graze her cervix at the right angle, but not so long as to ever hurt her, even during some of their faster and rougher encounters.

Their faces brought close together, she doesn't waste the opportunity to kiss him again. While trying not to break the kiss, she starts to alternate between the languid pace of her hips, to quicker and shallower thrusts. It's not long before she loses focus on the kiss and her movements get more erratic as she grinds down on him with very deep but short thrusts, trying to hit that sweet spot just right, over and over. One of her hands flies down to her clit and just a few strokes sends her flying over the edge. She keeps bouncing on his dick, slower now as she rides out her orgasm.

She slows to a halt and catches her breath for a while, resting her forehead against John's shoulder as she twitches and pulses around his cock. Then she straightens up and starts moving again, with the singular goal of getting John off in mind. Everything feels over-sensitive at first, but Mary's refractory period is notoriously short and she's able to get herself worked up again in no time. She uses her legs to quickly pull herself up, and lets gravity take care of bringing her quickly back down. She rides him fast and hard, squeezing against him as tightly as she can, and when she feels John's hands tighten on her thighs, she knows he's close. She speeds up a beat, and then he lets out a choked moan and his hands flying up to her hips in a death grip to control the pace as he comes, his own hips snapping up into her a few times.

One of her hands seeks out her clit again and rubs at it in rapid strokes as she watches John's face overcome with pleasure. He opens his eyes lazily and looks into hers, and she whimpers and fights any urge to close her eyes or bury her face in his shoulder, instead maintaining that steady eye contact until her second orgasm rolls up like a wave and then crashes down on her. She slows the movements of her hand as she clenches hard against John's now slightly softening prick. Panting, she finally breaks the eye contact and melts into John, winding her arms around his neck. He wraps his arms around her waist and holds her firmly in place, and the two of them stay like that together with him still inside her for a long while.

Mary nearly falls asleep like that, wrapped in all that warmth and happiness, but eventually her muscles begin to protest at the straining position. She pulls back from John and gently lifts herself off him, letting him slip out of her with a wet sound.

They decide to clean up with a quick shower together, then spend the rest of the day doing their usual things on a day off ― they take a walk to a nearby café for lunch, then back home to do some paperwork they didn't get done yet at the office, then a trip to the supermarket for dinner and some other things they need around the house.

They don't mention Sherlock again for the whole day. And for days after that, they might mention him here or there, but the significance of talking about Sherlock begins to taper off, and it really starts to feel like the gaping wound Sherlock had left John with is making some really healthy progress. They've gotten through the worst of it, and they've hashed out things that needed hashing, and everything is starting to solidify into a new life that gives them a calmness in their lives that they'd practically forgotten even existed in the world.

And things start to feel okay again. Because it's easy to sit and keep reliving memories of the past, but those times are gone and never coming back and neither she nor John can hardly afford to dwell on it.

And then one day, they're completely wrong. And Sherlock comes back.


	4. all the fuss about him

Sherlock Holmes is this sort of entity, this vague notion that, really, Mary had known an awful lot about, she's seen pictures, read his own written word, heard first-hand accounts of what he was like, but you just don't understand a person until you meet them face to face.

She always figured she would've liked Sherlock well enough; he was smart, obviously, and the way John talks about him, you can't help but share some of the same fondness through his words. But actually meeting him for the first time completely blows her away. Past the initial shock in the restaurant, once they've relocated to the little halal food joint, it's all she can do to keep her jaw off the floor as she stares at him in wonder as he rattles off his side of the story.

He's a hurricane, an absolute calamity. It's impossible to miss even just watching him, his mannerisms, his voice, his...Sherlockness. Oh, she's already getting a much better understanding for what John felt, the way this madman draws you in like a magnet and does not let go.

"I like him," she tells John later in the cab with a smile and a little shrug.

It's not as though she couldn't see all the things other people would find repellant about Sherlock, because she absolutely could. Anyone who's spent five minutes with the man could undoubtedly discern that he drives most people up the wall, and they often don't care to get any further with him than that. But Mary must have some strange, rare gene inside her the same as John that makes it impossible for her to be really, truly fazed by his brutal honesty and leaves her awed in the wake of his brilliance.

Barely a single day after Mary meets Sherlock in person, they're racing to find her kidnapped husband. This brings them very close, very fast. A lot closer than you'd expect two people to be when they've only met yesterday, but being thrown into a situation like that, full of danger and horrified desperation, will usually do that to you. Mary supposes, it's sort of like how John and Sherlock's relationship formed, in a chaotic whirlwind that picked them up before either of them could stop it.

The next phase of her life rushes by in blaze — there's the months before the wedding, in which John and Sherlock take on a number of cases, they have their stag night, and little planning actually gets done until it starts really closing in on the wedding date, after which John and Mary go on their honeymoon and try and prepare themselves for the idea of parenthood. For Mary, it really feels like her life finally falling into place and heading towards a fairy tale ending she never thought could be possible for her anymore.

That is, until the name Magnussen comes back to haunt her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm terribly sorry for the long wait for this chapter, especially when it's so short. But, I've already jumped ahead and written a lot of future scenes so new chapters should be out much sooner!


	5. connect the dots

When John casually brings up his name one day over breakfast, she can barely believe her ears.

"Can you believe he just whizzed in the fireplace? And then Sherlock barely even notices, he acts like its a perfectly normal thing to do, and—"

"What did you say this man's name was?" Mary tries to keep the ice-cold horror creeping up on her out of her voice, like her world isn't suddenly crumbling around her.

"It was Magnussen. Something something Magnussen. Charles...? Yeah, that's it, Charles Augustus Magnussen. He owns some newspapers, but Sherlock says he's got a vault or something, full of so much dirt on people that he controls whoever he wants."

Mary carries out the rest of the conversation with a perfunctory level of engagement, but her head is absolutely swimming with this new information. Anyone who's anyone in her previous line of work knows that name well, and the magnitude of sheer hell its owner can wreak on you in the snap of his slimy, wretched fingers. She knows he knows everything about her past, and the thought of someone with that knowledge even in the same room as John, let alone someone as vile and toxic as Magnussen, wracks Mary to her absolute core with an amount of terror she didn't know was humanly possible.

If Magnussen's showing himself to Sherlock, there's a reason. There's something he wants. It's no secret who Sherlock's brother is, and the position of power he holds. If Magnussen wants something with Sherlock, it's surely only to get to Mycroft, and it's only a matter of time before it's bound to trickle down to her. Magnussen will use his information against her, and it could easily get to John.

John _can't_ know.

Mary knows what his best friend's "suicide" did to John. She helped him get through some of his darkest moments. If John were to learn of Mary's past...she has no idea the kind of torture it would put him through. Anyone learning that kind of thing about their wife would be horrible, but John especially is in a more fragile state. Not only has it been hard for him to regain his trust in Sherlock after he came back, but he's also the type of man who tries so _hard_ to look like a decent person. Mary and Sherlock both know how much John is attracted to danger, but Mary also understands his desire to pretend he's not. If he were to learn about Mary's past, he would be so conflicted — conflicted with issues of trust, conflicted by whether or not he can come to terms with the kinds of acts she has committed, conflicted by how much he hates it, but also how much he _likes_ it. She's almost certain he'd feel a little thrill at the idea of her past, thinking of it as an abstract concept like a badass character from a movie, and then feel sickening guilt afterwards. He'll be torn apart by it, and she would surely lose him in the process, and she couldn't bear it, she absolutely couldn't bear it.

She quietly takes a deep breath. She has to calm down. She knew this was a possibility. Having a past like hers means there are certain tabs she has to keep to maintain her safety. She knew Magnussen could be a potential threat to her for the rest of her life, it's why she befriended Janine in the first place, so she could have a door open to her if she ever needed it.

Luckily, Janine is actually lovely, and they get on rather well, making it easy for Mary to maintain her friendship with her.

Unsurprisingly, a person working for a man like Magnussen isn't going to be open and forthcoming with details about their job or employer. But Mary knows what to look for and how to gently poke and prod and make Janine realize she can trust her. It becomes clear that Janine knows Magnussen is a very bad person. The extent to how bad, and why Janine continues to work for him remain unclear, but it's not something Mary needs to know, because she only needs to know that Janine does not align herself morally to Magnussen and harbors no suspicion towards Mary.

It takes some skill to steer the conversation in a direction that casually reveals Janine's evening work schedule with Magnussen, but she has to do it. She has to nip it in the bud and deal with him before he gets to her.

: :

When she hears Sherlock's voice behind her, as she stands with her gun pointed steadfastly at Magnussen's head, the dread trickles down her oesophagus to puddle in her stomach like a thick and heavy poison. She has to fight back the panic and keep a tight grip on her familiar but now slightly ill-fitting assassin persona.

It's an out-of-body experience to shoot Sherlock. She feels utterly disconnected from her body as it works completely on instinct. She doesn't let herself think about what she's doing because if she does, it'll break her, and all her work to protect John will go to waste. John can survive an injured Sherlock. He can't survive the reality of the one who would injure him.

: :

Mary's good at improv. They loved her for that, her old employers, from her old life. They could put her on a job with unpredictable outcomes and trust her to come out on top. So when Mary's inside the house facade — staring down the alleyway at the mess she made of Sherlock, with no idea how she wants this to turn out, let alone what's most likely — she lets herself sink back into that persona and do what she does best.

She can't allow herself to stop and think how often she's had to slip into her old persona since Magnussen reentered her life. She just has to use it for the coping mechanism it is and keep going.

When Sherlock reveals himself, and the person sitting in that seat down the alley, John, her John, who looks so beaten down and determined to not let it show, she feels the level of horror she had imagined she'd feel, but also something surreal and indescribable.

She thinks about how Sherlock chose, under no easy circumstances, to tell John the truth as quickly as possible and in a way that could leave John with no doubt of its truth. Having her come here and say things and shoot the coin all do much more to exemplify the reality of her true nature than anything Sherlock could have told John as the former lay in a hospital bed, hopped up on morphine. And Mary feels like she can actually respect that — the desire to show John that level of candidness. Mary probably wouldn't have even been able to achieve that with John if she had ever decided to tell him herself.

She also thinks about how if Sherlock is telling John about this, he must think John will survive it. Mary knows it will take a long, long time, and John might not still want her by his side by the end of it, but he'll survive it. Mary wonders how she could have possibly underestimated his strength like that, but, she also hadn't wanted to overestimate her own, and assume she could survive it, too.


	6. months of silence

The months after Mary gives him that flashdrive are pure agony. John won't talk to her, Sherlock's back in the hospital to recover from the bullet she put in him plus all the damage he piled on top of it from his little breakout marriage counseling stunt, and she's left to figure out how to be pregnant alone and not freak out about it.

The silence in the Watson residence is deafening and often nearly unbearable. Mary wants desperately to break it, but she feels it to be John's right to take that step when he's ready. So instead, they wordlessly adjust their daily routines to dance around each other in the house; never in the kitchen at the same time making a meal, never in the bathroom at the same time to get ready. One of them in the bedroom, the other in the living room. Swap. Rinse and repeat.

Mary thinks often of visiting Sherlock in the hospital, but she can't help but wonder how well-received it can really be to be visited by the person who put you in the hospital in the first place. Before she can decide, she gets a text from him: _I can hear you brooding from all the way over here and it's annoying._

She can't help the smile it puts on her face, and she makes up her mind to visit him today. She can only handle the crushing guilt of John's silence for so long, until she's gagging to trade it for the crushing guilt of sitting at Sherlock's bedside.

When she gets to his room, the door is open with the curtain drawn around his bed. Throughout her work as a nurse, she's taken to naturally making herself as quiet as possible until she's sure the patient's awake. Sure enough when she peeks her head around the curtain, he's sound asleep, so she slips into the bedside chair and watches his peaceful face to the tune of his life-force manifesting in mechanical beeps coming from all manner of machines surrounding him.

As though he can deduce her presence even mid-sleep, he soon cracks open a bleary eye at her. "Oh, _finally_ ," he groans. "I fell unconscious out of sheer boredom."

She gives him a weak smile, finding it cute that he's trying to cover up his sleepiness, but she's still trying to understand where she stands with him.

"It really must be dreadful for you here," she says softly.

Sherlock fixes his piercing gaze on her. "Don't."

She looks away from him and stares at the heart monitor next to him miserably.

"I know why you did what you did," he says firmly. "And to—to be perfectly frank with you, I...I probably would have done something similar to _you_ , if our positions were reversed. If it would...if it were for his sake."

Mary never would've thought she could be so happy being told by someone that they probably would've shot her. She gives him a watery smile, her bottom lip quivering. "Oh, Sherlock. The things we'd do for that ridiculous man of ours."

Sherlock's returning smile is full of affection and sadness. "But you understand why I had to tell him."

She gives a round of short, quick nods as she stares at the frayed edges of Sherlock's hospital blanket, bringing her hands up to fiddle with it.

He takes a deep breath and turns his head to stare at the ceiling. "I'm almost done here. John's been monitoring emails from potential clients and giving me small cases to work on from here, but I need to get back out in the _field_."

"John's been...been coming to visit you?" It's a stupid question, because of course John would be coming to visit him, but she still finds herself surprised by it.

Sherlock quirks an eyebrow. "He hasn't...mentioned it?"

"Well, he hasn't..." Mary looks away again. "...been terribly talkative since..."

Those eyebrows of his drop down to furrow deeply. "Hasn't he?"

"No, he hasn't exactly...said anything at all, really. S'just been radio silence on his end."

"But he..." Sherlock looks bewildered. "He acted completely normal. Obviously he's been coming to terms with what he learned about you, and we never explicitly spoke of you since I figured that was more his area to talk about, but I assumed everything was...progressing, at the very least. I figured your absence when he visited was more due to utterly unnecessary feelings of guilt or trepidation you might be harboring, hence the text."

Mary presses her lips together tightly, a mix of emotions coursing through her at the idea of John coming down her to visit Sherlock and acting so thoroughly nonplussed that even Sherlock Holmes didn't pick up on anything amiss. She just shakes her head minutely.

"So...nothing?" Sherlock asks, still seeming shocked that he hadn't deduced this.

"Nothing."

"What about...well, you had a check up last week," He glances down at her belly.

"I went alone. I have to give him his space, he...I have to let him come back to me in his own time. If he even chooses to ever come back."

Sherlock actually looks angry at this. "What rubbish! He's not some, some timid, wild _deer_ that's going to get spooked when you—if you were—if—" he breaks off, expressing the rest of his sentence by flapping his hands wildly in the air. "You _have_ to talk to him. Otherwise he'll just steep in his own idiotic, false ideas about—"

"No, Sherlock. It doesn't work like that. Not for me. You have a special sort of power with him, you can do mental things and then carry on and John will inevitably fall back into place next to you. But I have to...this is a lot for him to digest."

Sherlock rolls his eyes and huffs, still not totally buying it but beginning to accept it. "It makes me sick. _I'm_ the one you shot, I don't need anyone getting angry on my behalf when it's obvious you're still the best thing that ever happened to John. Perhaps even _more_ so now, what with John's attraction to danger."

Mary smiles and grabs one of Sherlock's hands in both of hers, careful to avoid the IV. "Sherlock, I know you're lovely and it was awful that I shot you, but it's not the only thing John's struggling with right now."

Sherlock smirks. "Are you quite sure? I'm obviously one half of the only important people in his life, what does he give a toss about all those other people from your past?"

Mary's smile turns into a grin, and she gives Sherlock's hand a few pats before standing up.

"I should probably get going. I'll see you again soon, though."

Sherlock sighs and flops back in his bed. As Mary gets to the door, he says, "Mary?"

She turns around to look at him, one hand braced on the threshold of the door.

"Don't worry," he says softly. "I'll talk him round."


End file.
